Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists have simplified the chemical synthesis of small molecules, eliminating a major bottleneck that limits the exploration of a class of compounds offering tremendous ...

(Phys.org)—The parasites that cause schistosomiasis, one of the most common parasitic infections in the world, are notoriously long-lived. Researchers have now found stem cells inside the parasite that ...

A new microscope invented by scientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus will let researchers use an exquisitely thin sheet of light -- similar to that used in supermarket bar-code scanners ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- The pulsing of a single neuron can switch a brain’s waves from the equivalent of a big ocean swell to ripples on a pond, according to new research from Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator ...

Over the last decade, powerful new microscopes have dramatically sharpened biologists' focus on the molecules that animate and propel life. Now, a new imaging platform developed by Eric Betzig and colleagues ...

A new study demonstrates that specific traits that distinguish humans from their closest living relatives  chimpanzees, with whom we share 96 percent of our DNA  can be attributed to the loss of chunks of DNA ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Roughly 10 million years ago, a major genetic change occurred in a common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Segments of DNA in its genome began to form duplicate copies at a greater ...

The complexity of biology can befuddle even the most sophisticated light microscopes. Biological samples bend light in unpredictable ways, returning difficult-to-interpret information to the microscope and ...

(Phys.org) -- As plants began to transition from aquatic habitats to dry land some 500 million years ago, their needs changed. Those primitive ancestors of modern plants were ill-equipped to survive in a dry, sunlight-blasted ...

Researchers have a new tool to understand how cancers grow -- and with it a new opportunity to identify novel cancer drugs. They've been able to break apart human prostate tissue, extract the stem cells in that tissue, and ...

The shapes of some of the tiniest cellular structures are coming into sharper focus at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus, where scientists have developed a new imaging technology that produces ...

(Medical Xpress) -- The transformation of a fertilized egg into a functioning animal requires thousands of cell divisions and intricate rearrangements of those cells. That process is captured with unprecedented ...

(Phys.org) —When the infectious fungus Histoplasma capsulatum feels the temperature start to rise, it undergoes a transformation. As it shifts its shape from long filaments to oval cells, the pathogen switches on genes ...

A detailed comparison of DNA and RNA in human cells has uncovered a surprising number of cases where the corresponding sequences are not, as has long been assumed, identical. The RNA-DNA differences generate proteins that ...